


dichotomy | wolmet week, day 1

by glassthroat



Series: Wolmet Week [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Also very vague smut., Angst, Angst and Drama, Emet-Selch Is A Bastard, F/M, It's not super defined but it is there., Miqo'te Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), This is not happy in its ending., listen when ur horny for ur soulmate things happen, pregnancy mention
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-17
Updated: 2020-09-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26505655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassthroat/pseuds/glassthroat
Summary: “Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.”― Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man-- Day 1 of the WolMet week prompts from Twitter.To save a world was a monumental challenge and no one else - no one else in this realm - could do what she did, she knew, from the first time she'd taken in the Light. Who else was supposed to do it? Such was the way of things; it was a burden that could be laid on the shoulders of no one else but the one who had begun to shift the very fabric of the world itself. How long had she stared at the weaves of aether that hung in the air over her head when she had first seen the Light? No, no one else could have done what she had, Xel knew in the end.This was a job as ever for a hero.
Relationships: Solus zos Galvus | Emet-Selch/Warrior of Light
Series: Wolmet Week [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1927048
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	dichotomy | wolmet week, day 1

There was light tapping at the ceiling, whispers of dots that gleamed between the shadows of the leaves. It tap-tap-tapped over and over, shifting and moving with the susurration of the breeze that whispered through the open windows. Her eyes focused on the images of those defined shapes but vaguely, lips pressed together as a hand rested over her stomach. A flick of an ear, a twitch of her tail, the vaunted Warrior of Darkness laid atop her bed and stared at the ceiling. Such a simple woman she could be at times, she bore the surname Metallium. Xel, of a house that was not her own - in a world that was not her own. But this was not a simple day or a simple time in her life.

Tap-tap-tap, circles of light dancing quietly on the ceiling, defined by the sun starting to settle down upon the western horizon. She could almost hear the whispering of that light, a more natural light compared to the unnatural monstrous shining that had held the skies of the world when she had first beheld them. Xel had changed that. Xel herself had changed. Her eyes blinked once. Twice. The click of lashes against cheeks, the soft murmur of her own breathing. It was all that filled the room. Dark and light, together.

Tap-tap-tap went the points of the shadows against the wall in faint flutters, sharply defined by the light that caused them to form.

Her hand shifted on her stomach, a twitch, the first movement she had made in a long while, since she had come to her chambers and laid down while knowing that her friends would likely be calling upon her later as she regarded the juxtaposition of what she saw now. Light and dark. How she had woven both together. Seeing the skies clearing, seeing the shimmering crystalline Light disappearing, fading, revealing a refulgent splendor of stars in a profusion seldom so beautiful. It had been at her hand, guided by instinct and vague hints by a man she had not trusted once only to discover that he had been an old friend by the end of things. And so too had Xel been led along by a smile of amusement from another soul at her fumbling footsteps, a gently mocking voice pointing out her own inefficiencies without hesitation. Yet he had provided guidance when it had been truly required of him.

Tap-tap-tap. The dance of the light that did not fully chase away the shadows of the room.

If she but turned her head, she was all but sure she would see him there now, hovering in the corner, waiting to chide her for her own laziness and torpor, willing to scold for she was not doing what he likely wished her to as quickly as he yearned for. An echo, a manifestation of a yearning that would never come to fruition once again. Her eyes closed, fingers curling over her stomach. The Light had marked her body, washing through vein and bone and marrow in curling tendrils of ivy-like vines until it had been but a bramblethorn patch that cut through her figure, choking her on its flavor, threatening to clog lungs and heart and head all. He had marked her with a darkness so deep, it had been a staining across her soul, a touch of fingers and skin and warmth. 

She had clung to that warmth.

How odd. The Light had been cold, like steel scraping bone, like ice wrapped in crystals to refract its radiance, gleaming and bright and without substance, without warmth. It had hung, heavy and oppressive, in a way that light should never do. It loomed, suffocating her underneath its weight, leaving her feeling smaller and smaller until she was sure she could be crushed into but the core of herself. How she had grown to hate the shimmering in the air, the hovering song of something terrible and beautiful. It had been cold and so massive, extending from horizon to horizon and she had never undertaken a challenge like it before. Had never undertaken the sensation of having to save a world. A nation, yes, an alliance, yes -- but a world had been something new. A world had been a task she had never expected before.

To save a world was a monumental challenge and no one else - no one else in this realm - could do what she did, she knew, from the first time she'd taken in the Light. Who else was supposed to do it? Such was the way of things; it was a burden that could be laid on the shoulders of no one else but the one who had begun to shift the very fabric of the world itself. How long had she stared at the weaves of aether that hung in the air over her head when she had first seen the Light? No, no one else could have done what she had, Xel knew in the end.

This was a job as ever for a hero.

_Hero._

How mocking that word read in her mind now, infected by an inflection that she had never thought to shed. Hero, he'd named her. Hero -- mocking, sarcastic, even downright obsequious at times. As if he had sought to make her believe him. Perhaps she had believed him to some degree, recognizing that small grain of truth in Emet-Selch's words and knowing he had not always told the truth, that there had been lies of omission, but she had not truly harped on it. As if she had been made to understand that he was truly trying to play at the truth. Whatever the truth had been for him. Had she ever believed him? Perhaps. Once.

During a dark night, swathed in hot velvet darkness and heat, her limbs wrapping around a body not her own but fit so well, so close. How she had breathed out a name in rapture, in veneration, finding the burning in veins and flesh to be appeased by the skillful application of touch against collarbone, of lips against stomach, of feeling full in a way she had never been before, so base, so carnal, intimate and wanton and everything -- _everything_ \-- she had yearned for in those days. How she had left marks of her own, teeth pressing into shoulder, neck, wrist, chest -- biting down, biting into blood, biting into hot redness of meat and daring to scrape those fangs upon bone. She had not dared to let herself behave so with another before now. To be so feral, bestial in ways she suppressed, but he had coaxed her, challenged her, touched without relenting. 

In the end, she knew it had been inevitable, from the first time she had laid her eyes on him. And she had not felt sorry for it. Not then.

Her hips had twisted upwards, down, pushing, dancing to a rhythm base and simple and older than time itself. How there had been the need, of finding hands on hips, bruises in tender places later, of scratches and welts, of the drive of heat, a burning within her body that had not abated for days yet until he had been there to aid in extinguishing the heady drive of such yearning that her body had sought. Teeth in necks, hands seeking out such pleasant places, of how she had grasped hair that had been a blend of coffee, of cream, and yanked until she was sure that that scalp had been sore. Oh, how she had been sure, if the way a hand had lifted upwards to it later while she laid there under those blankets said anything, gaze resting upon his back, watching the flex of muscles beneath pale skin.

Her hand had stretched out - touched over that spine, moved upwards, eased across a shoulder and how she had drawn him down, rolling to press a kiss to his mouth. She had not felt dirty. Not that night. Not in the days afterwards. Not when it had been something that they had seemed to wish to enjoy in mutual nature. She had reveled in it, in him, in their closeness to one another for he had been the balm to the fire that burned within her body. His shadow had not been a threat but a comfort. How she had loved the darkness he had brought, keeping her away from everything. Had hidden from the light beneath that form. From those shining skies, from those glaring scintillating beams, from the keening of the aether that filled her ears in fullness.

She had felt dirty in the day afterwards when she had sought to touch another kiss to his mouth, to pull him close -- and he had smirked at her, murmured something that had had her recoil, that had had her eyes focus on him in shock -- and then her hand had come up and around, aiming for his face, his hand catching hers at the wrist, her gaze glaring into those depths of gold. 

_"Do you really think that this means anything to me, hero? I just had an itch to scratch -- and it was easy enough to scratch where you were concerned, after all. You were -- so **eager** for it, after all. Who was I to deny your urges and satisfy myself at the same time, hmm?"_

With that, he had vanished, a flurry of darkness before she could unleash any retaliation against him, physical or magical. Her disappearances from her friends were not uncommon but it had been Ryne and Y'shtola who had noticed first, that dry hardness in her stare. It had been Urianger who had spoken quietly with her to reassure her that he understood well enough where she may have been - and if she wished it, he would gladly aid her in vengeance. Even Thancred hadn't had a witty comeback for once; he had merely looked at her and then turned his head away, as if he was withholding judgment all his own. Let them judge her if they wished. She had judged herself harshly enough. Xel would not let that occur again. But she had not spoken of it and none of her friends dared to broach the subject themselves. Xel had clearly drawn a hard line in the sand where this was concerned.

She had not seen him again after that until the day atop the pinnacle of Mount Gulg. There, staring at him as the Light threatened to tear her apart. She had gazed at him, her eyes full of a pain that was not just the agony of seeing a friend she had once thought gone from her life laying on the ground with a wound in his back from that gun but an agony of staring at a man she had never truly understood. A man that she had found herself needing in her life in a way that she could never have defined unto anyone else. There, in the Light, she had seen a man who was wreathed in a Darkness she could never have truly understood.

How much of it was a bitterness of long ages spent in a loneliness she could not comprehend? Ardbert had said it at the Ladder. How solitude ate away at a person, about how it had come close to finishing him off - and how glad she was that it had not. Yet he could not begin to imagine what it had been like for Emet-Selch -- just as she could not either. Within her, the Light had burned. It had burned and been almost too much for her -- almost. 

First a world enshrouded in Light and then they had descended into the ocean depths, down and down and down -- into a darkness that had been a relief. How she had nearly sobbed from the cessation of the pain that had burned through her body. How comforting the darkness that had wrapped around her, different from those warm nights, but no less a gratification all its own. But when the darkness of a night of fire and blood ended in the memories of a man who could not relinquish that pain, when the light of the dawn came over her face, she had not wept. Not then. And she could not weep now.

_"Fool. Who are you? No one. Nothing. Once I have reclaimed my heritage, my first act will be to expunge your stain from history's weave. My world will have no need for heroes."_

**This world is not yours to end. This is _our future_. _Our_ story.**

_"No… it can't be. -- bah, a trick of the light! You are a **broken husk** , nothing more! How can you hope to stand against me alone?"_

She had stood, though, aided by friends, by those that had ever been her bulwark when she had faltered. She had gazed up at the form that had twisted into full refulgence, staring at the avatar of an ancient pain and malice alike that she had never truly hated. Not even after what he had said. Not after what he had done. She had declared herself and he had taken it in kind.

**It ends this day. One way or another, it ends.**

How she had cast her will against his. She had chosen to stand against him, her own emotions a tumult of pain and anger and something else she had never allowed herself to regard too closely. They had both known it would come down to this. The tempering that Zodiark had cast upon the Ascians had ensured it, as had their conflicting views of what was to be of things. He had spoken once of how he had hoped that they could take over the role he had once hoped for them. But no longer. The Light burned within her, radiant against the darkness that bled from him. They had stood, ready, and she had known then that it would be to the death.

His tempering - her own will - would allow for nothing else between them.

**__** _"... very well then. Let us proceed to your final judgment. The victor shall write the tale, and the vanquished become its villain! But come! Let us cast aside titles and pretense, and reveal our true faces to one another!_

_**I am Hades! He who shall awaken our brethren from their dark slumber."**_

Had the tears fallen in those moments when it had just been them standing in the breaking of the dawn's light? When he had smiled at her? When she had stared at the ruination wrought upon his form by her own hands when the darkness had threatened to engulf her and she had hurled every last bit of her will against this man that she had dared to --

Would that word ever fall from her lips--?

_"Remember us. Remember… that **we** once lived."_

How she had stared, the wetness on her cheeks as Xel had formed his name to be lost in the light that gleamed ever brighter over the ruins of a city that she had once known. Had it been a sensation of relief he had looked to her within those moments? Or had it been something else entirely that hovered between them, something that they would never speak aloud for they had known of what was to come. They knew they would stand there in this moment - one way or another.

Tap-tap-tap. The leaves shifted with another breeze, dancing quietly with a whisper of air that curled into her room. It was a murmuring with the smell of spring-time warmth to it.

The shadows were growing larger, deeper, as the sun continued to sink downwards. As the night began to overtake the lands outside, she found that strange relief once again in her veins. No matter that the burning aether of the Light was gone now, she found a strange relief in the oncoming of night, in the shadows that would overtake the world. Strange how there was that balance which she had known about -- which had been there -- and yet -- … and yet… 

She closed her eyes, closed herself away from the remaining shadows, the fading light, turned her head from staring at the wall as her hand stroked over her stomach again. Healing magic was a hell of a thing, it seemed. She had thought, what with the Light having twisted her body the way it had been doing, the process of it, that such a thing would be able to take care of itself. If there was any justice in the world, it should have done so. Surely it should have. There were no words for herself right now, of what had taken place, of what it meant. For surely, _surely,_ it had to mean something that this had happened. It had to mean something, somehow.

Her hand pressed over that faint swell, lips parting, and she ignored the sensations that it stirred within her. It did not matter. She had, after all, learned that long ago. It could not - did not - mean anything. Imagination. The body could certainly . Surely just that. But she knew that more was expected of her and that she could not spare time to dwell on a non-existent issue for such a thing would resolve itself. She was the hero of the hour and it was her job to ensure the safety of others these days. It always was. She had returned the Darkness to this world at the cost of a light that had swelled hot within her chest. 

There was more work to do. There always was. The Light had been banished from the world -- but it wasn't in equilibrium yet, after all. And she was the Hero. The Warrior of Darkness. It was her job to make things better again. It always was. She could make everything better for everyone else, since it was her job, but no one could make anything better for her. 

So it was - and so it went.

Light and darkness wrapped within her, hand in hand, and she was their herald.

_Time to save the world, hero._

**Author's Note:**

> I knew this was possibly going to come out full angst but I DID NOT EXPECT TO HURT MYSELF SO MUCH.


End file.
